ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

Friends who like old Hollywood films decided to pay Amazon Prime about $15. to buy this one and admit they did so because the film got such good reviews. An hour into it they were disgusted and said they're never going to bother watching the rest and are mourning their expenditure. When I asked why, he said the acting was forced. He hated the scenes with the little girl and the dog. In particular, he felt it was too jammed with cultural references and wished just once someone could drive without the radio blaring. She said without specifying, "We are not interested."

But hey, they spent $15. So I asked if I could watch the film at their place and did.

To me the thematic of this film is violence, violence - over kill- in Hollywood fantasies juxtapositioned against the real overkill of the Manson murders in the Hollywood Hills. Of course our tension builds as we see the hostile situation going on at the ranch where the cult lives, which was once a ranch where Westerns were filmed. We know the era of cowboys and gunslingers depicted in film is near over by 1968 and so will be work for actors known for them. 

(We haven't seen a modern cowboy film since Brokeback Mountain.) 

From our current hip viewpoint the obvious racism that was taken in stride in that cowboy film era is cringeworthy. I'm so glad the film maker was true to that era and didn't rewrite film or Hollywood history. It gives us a reward, a sense of how far we've come.

These characters drink and smoke and aren't in AA or concerned they'll get cancer. (Remember that freedom?) They are macho. Maybe there aren't too many men like that left.

At the same time, the film successfully has pulled off something few ever do. We know the cowboy acting scenes have a fictive, fake feel yet we forget the Manson scenes are. We get to know Sharon Tate and her friends on an ordinary day.

The violence in the cowboy scenes is gratuitous. The violence in stopping the Manson killers, necessary.

Wes used to tell me how the Manson murders ended the peace and love hippie era in Hollywood, something, like the cowboy actor and stunt man in this film, he was never part of. People who never owned guns bought them and people started locking up. Back in the day Americans were still big on cowboys and how the West was won. Television Westerns and movie Westerns - John Wayne - Dale Rogers and Roy Rogers, Gene Autry - these were the heroes of children and adult viewers alike. Many a boy wanted to be a cowboy when he grew up. These stories fueled pretend play in backyards.

There are still a few of those cowboy and cowgirl actors around. Trick riders on fast horses and the stuntmen too. They aren't all at Universal Studios. Many own apartment buildings.

As the Western genre has to be my least favorite, I admit my generally negative attitude early on in my viewing of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. The cowboy actor (acted by Leonardo Di Caption) isn't appealing even as recreations of dialogues and the sets - saloons - shoot outs seem classic. Then I realized yes, there was something different about television acting then and the recreation was accurate. 

The drastically different lifestyles of the cowboy actor whose got a house in the Hollywood Hills versus the stunt man living in a trailer near an oil pump that works (probably Van Nuys) : I have a reference for that. Many Hollywood stars stayed rich because they bought land in the San Fernando Valley - ranches - and sold off that land - real estate.

Of course in this reimagining, the Manson murderers are stopped before they can kill and when that happens, because you as an audience - or me - know what did happen and you hate those characters - so you - I - are laughing - yes entertained - when they get theirs. Meaning, once again violence is entertaining.  It's fun to see an enemy over killed. The same guns, blow torches and fists that are fake on sets kill in "real" life.

So there you are in 2021 cheering on the good guys, though they are violent, which isn't very nice of politically correct you, in that way taking part in the violence. Just as children once cheered on their cowboy film favorites on the TV set after school. Bonanza reruns.

Art is participatory.

Quentin Tarantino

made me participate.

Thumbs up.

C Christine Trzyna 2021

NETFLIX's POLITICALLY CORRECT SERIES "HOLLYWOOD" A FANTASY

I indulged myself in this series, which is supposed to be set in Hollywood after World War II.  I love historically correct exteriors, interiors, clothing (costuming), hairstyles, and so on, so I stuck with it.  It seemed to be an excuse for displaying suggestions of homosexual sex.

I kept thinking about how Netflix often nears pornography and how offended some of our American population is by this; Netflix doesn't care about loosing or offending some viewers. 

Let me save you the time spent watching it.

It was so politically correct it was ridiculously inaccurate.  It was the result of idealistic but ignorant script writing - a clear agenda - not based in historical accuracy.

Let's start with the language.  The young female Black actress talks about herself as a "person of color."  Black people in the 1940's were not called persons of color (to mean anyone not considered to be "white") nor were they called African-American or Black.  They were called Negroes and called themselves Negroes.  Into the 1960's some of the older people still referred to themselves that way.

Then there is a part of dialogue in which the actor refers to "the conversation" using it in the 2020 way.  Nobody in the 1940's thought conversation was anything other than talking to one or more people.

In the fantasy that this series is, feminism and gay liberation as well as racist issues are all part of the plot.  The characters are considered to be heroes and heroines as they move these ideologies forward.  Actually in real life such aspirations started happening twenty or more years in the future.  For instance, female studio executives and studio heads are a result of the thrust of feminism and women's liberation of the 1970's.  But they got it right when they suggested Hollywood was a Jewish-made town and most all of the first stage of female studio executives were Jewish women.

Multiple characters were based on people who are dead and research apparently included tabloids. These characters include Rock Hudson and agent Henry Willson and as characters they are used to give us more sex.

I note that Scotty Bowers, the man who a couple years back wrote the memoir Full Service, about a gas station in Hollywood that was a front for a prostitution service, is named as a character.  I read Scotty's book and he said he never took money for hooking people up, that he did so for pleasure and friendship, but he's portrayed as a failed actor who took a 50% cut.

I guess this is one of the reasons that I'm so focused on documentaries and memoirs. I'm up for some speculation and if a series is clearly labeled fantasy at least I know what I'm in for.  Know those popular posters that have James Dean riding Marilyn Monroe on the back of his motorcycle?  It never happened.  Hollywood - the Netflix series - is like that.


C 2020 Christine Trzyna

HOLIDAY FILM JAG and EXCELLENT EATING

Over the holidays I had the opportunity to house and dog sit for three days for some friends who headed to the mountains and snow, just me, a warm blanket in an unheated house, and their Netflix. I do not own a TV, have not in years, and it's been a long time since I binged on film.

I brought a book with me, Joyce Carol Oates "The Falls," but once I realized that (at last!) I'd encountered a remote that I could manipulate without frustration, I decided to sit in a wonderful easy chair with the dogs on my lap and watch a few films. This turned into a three day personal film fest with no human to consider except myself.  Sweet aloneness!  

I got up between films only to bake; pumpkin flax seed dog treats, pumpkin oatmeal cherry bread, applesauce oatmeal raisin bread, a pork roast with sour kraut and yams. The later being something reminiscent of my upbringing.  Pork and kraut was supposed to be "good luck" if eaten on New Years Day. The dogs loved it. I became their new best friend. Even the cat begged for some, followed me room to room.  I later discovered she had propelled herself onto the bed in a swirl of blankets and sweaters, sleeping as if she had not in weeks. 

I made some New Years Resolutions that all have to do with diet. To drink at least one tall glass of pure water every morning. I'm well hydrated but...  To reduce the amount of sugar and hidden sugars. Hidden sugars, in case you're interested include breads, corn, carrots, rice, and many "vegetarian" foods. To also continue to read labels to look for hidden soy.  I eat a lot of beans and legumes... Frightening possible consequences to too much soy intake in new vegetarian burgers includes, according to one news article, the feminization of men. To eat more animal protein. I've learned about myself that the best way to avoid eating something is to not bring it home in the first place.  Temptation is, however, everywhere.

There I sat, eating more than enough, just for the taste, and including a bag of gum drops that had turned up in a gift someone gave me.  They were unlabeled but were moist and good.

I watched "The Irishman," the film about the murder of Teamsters Union leader Jimmy Hoffa, that's all the rage and the short discussion by the actors of the film.  It was cool to hear Buddy Knox's recording of "A White Sports Coat and a Pink Carnation" early in the sound track. (Wes loved Buddy as a human being and this was one of his favorite Buddy Knox rendered songs.)

Rolling Thunder Review : Bob Dylan tour long ago with Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith; a question of song lyrics as poetics and poets who are song writers.  (Dylan's song She Belongs To Me was a private theme song of mine, before Elvis Costello's I Write The Book.)

Above Us Only Sky about John Ono Lennon and Yoko Ono Lennon. The film seemed to be an advert for Yoko.  OK, she did not break up the Beatles.  I just kept thinking how YOUNG John was, how I have lived past the age of Elvis Presley or John Lennon were when they departed. I was a kid Beatles fan but then I let all fandom go. That quality, of not being overly impressed by "stars," has been a good thing for me personally and my writing.

Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives.  Gee, I can't recall anything about this film.  Maybe I went to take something out of the oven.

Amy (about Amy Winehouse) : A documentary that made me cry.  I've posted in this blog about Amy and mental illness before.

27 Gone Too Soon about the "27 club" musicians who died about then - Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain,  Janis Joplin, Mama Cass. Amy Winehouse. I did not cry.  I wasn't that impressed with this film as it was so tied in with drug use and seemed to have one book authors opinion most expressed, even if drug use was the reason why these stars died, even if they turned to drugs unable to handle stardom. I have an alternative theory tied into astrology and reincarnation theory.  I think these people lived only till their Saturn Return, that they came to do what they did and went.

A film about Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones in which he seemed to be happy and laughing about everything, including what he just said. The Rolling Stones seem to be taking credit for crediting Black musicians who came before them.  I sure hope they have forked some money over to these Black musicians.

Echoes In The Canyon. I loved this documentary, especially seeing Michelle Phillips thrilled with a Mama's and Papa's cover. However Bob Dylan's son, the musician, seemed to not have a full range of human emotions. He didn't quite disappear in the film, not with his gathering of present day singers and musicians to do good covers of some of the hits of the 1960's that were not his fathers. It was a relief to hear him sing and know that he does not sound like dad Bob and isn't trying to. He was just there otherwise, hearing testimonies without asking too many questions.  Maybe he had asked and the film was cut to the testimonials. I kept wishing someone would get a rise out of him.

Bombshell.  A surprise and delight.  Learned that actress Hedy Lamarr, whose film work I do not know, was not only a beautiful and sexy woman, but also an inventor whose inventions may include technology that is used today in Internet and Cell Phones.  She never got paid while others made a fortune.  A too common story for women, including me. Again I wonder, sometimes believe, that people are born to do something for society as a whole and in her case, perhaps she was doing her part to help the United States or the Allies win World War II and stop Nazism.

Bikram.  Excellent.  The yoga guru who has fled prosecution, perhaps a megalomaniac, who apparently was also a sexual harasser and rapist but has devoted yoginis all over the word. He has set up teaching elsewhere in the world.  I've wondered about how he managed to copyright the athletic moves in yoga that have been part of Hindu/Indian culture for centuries.  His attitude towards women in particular seems to be despicable.  Women need to stop giving their all in exchange for a pat on the head, back or rump, so to speak.  He gives Hinduism (yoga) a bad reputation, the guru fear that so many Fundamentalist Christians have.

And so the New Year begins, a new cycle we hope if not a new opportunity for hope.

Christine Trzyna

C 2020  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

BOBFEST - 1992 : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

ROLLINGSTONE - BobFest 30th Anniversary Concert Being Reissued



Image from Wikipedia


Loved this concert, but for Sinead O'Connor screaming lyrics, sulking, holding herself with her arms defensively around herself, glowering, smoking on stage, and otherwise calling a lot of attention to herself, rather than lovingly participating with so many greats that she was lucky to be invited to perform with. Read later that the audience booed her but don't hear it on the DVD. Loved Tracy Chapman's performance.

C 2017 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved

IT HAPPENED ON FIFTH AVENUE : FILM CIRCA 1947 : HOMELESSNESS CIRCA 1947 : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

A vintage Allied Artists film - staring Don DeFore, Ann Harding, Charlie Ruggles,  Victor Moore, Gale Storm.


This is an improbable but touching film in which a man who would otherwise be homeless lives the life of a millionaire by infiltrating the boarded up Fifth Avenue, New York, mansion of the second richest man in the world.  We see the man, his bowler hat, heavy coat, and cane, as he walks down the street, lifts up a man hole cover, and lets himself into a shut down but extremely livable mansion.  It's a squatter's dream with a stocked pantry and apparently a stocked cigar closet too.  This squatter knows well how to live the high life.  He is a highly principled person.  We never ask while watching "What did he do to deserve this?  When spring comes he has somewhere else to squat.  (He's nice enough to leave the place as he found it.  But in fiction we are always asked to suspend disbelief.)

Soon the rich man's daughter leaves finishing school on a whim to be a singer in New York and comes to live in the mansion as her bolt hole.  Then other people who have no homes - a couple with children, a single man down on his luck - come to live there.  These well dressed homeless are World War II veterans and mom's who wear their millinery and high heels while living in vehicles.

After the second richest man in the world - an Irishman! - has his detectives locate his wayward daughter, he and his ex wife come to visit and influence their daughter to get back to her education and privilege.  Of course, stereotypically mom is sympathetic to her daughter  because she has fallen in love with a man down on his luck.   Once upon a time she and her husband lived in a lousy apartment when they were first starting out.  You have to start somewhere.

But by the end of the film you know it; the rich man's heart softens to approve his daughter's less than greedy and materialistic romance and eventual marriage to that man.

The World War II veterans with no jobs and no homes decide to pool their money and get investors so they can establish a kind of shelter town in an abandoned army base.  Eventually the rich man gives in and supports their efforts, even though when he got word of their idea he bought it all up for himself.

Review:  While watching I was thinking how heartless people have become in the last 60 years. Old films with heart create a kind of happiness in one's own.  I was also thinking about the screenwriters of that era who were pitching their ideas to movie makers.  This film, posted as "an original story by Herbert Clyde Lewis and Frederick Stephani," was meant to be watched by hopeful Irish (20 years before we had out first and only Irish Catholic in the White House), by hopeful World War II Veterans (soon women who had worked in Industry would be encouraged by the government through well placed magazine articles and such to get married and be stay at home moms.  They were no longer supposed to take a job away from a man!), and by those who hoped that class differences could be melted (but seems to me we are nowhere near that yet.) 

To have a heart, to have hope, you must also have believe that people are essentially good.

That notion that people are essentially good, is what made this film one of four in a series called FILM FAVORITES, Classic Holiday Collection Vol 2.

C 2013 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE ANNA WINTOUR AND THE MAKING OF VOGUE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

This film was fascinating and fun.

OK, so we all know the film "THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA" was supposed to be about Anna Wintour (the DEVIL) famous, powerful fashion editor of Vogue and about the same subject, the production of the most influential fashion magazine in the world.

Is Anna really a bitch or does she maybe have to be?

Does anyone have to be a bitch? 

Woa! Don't want to get too philosophical in this moment!  Check in with the feminist impulse to never ever call any woman a bitch!

As I watched this video I thought about how busy Wintour is and how so many people - fashion designers - are pressing upon her trying to gain her approval so that their product can be featured in the magazine.  I would probably resist.  Wear sun glasses.  Be careful to remain professional.
 

The clips of famous fashion designers and fashion shows is exciting - their workrooms - the runway-

All of it is ART!

C 2013 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

DIANA VREELAND : THE EYE HAS TO TRAVEL : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

There's a book out by the same name, I believe, and this is the film documentary.  Looooved it!

As someone who has never been really fashionable, who tends towards comfort, and finds herself impossible to fit - shoes being especially impossible. As someone who hates nylons and has never worn a suit that felt right and can't afford made to order, you might think I have no interest in fashion.  But I do.

I embrace fashion for the creativity and skill it takes to create clothing for individuals and the masses and the designers we know about for their fortitude for the world of fashion is vicious and it seems a miracle that anyone makes it to the top and more a miracle that they stay on top.  I study fashion and try to understand it from fabrics and construction up.

Diana Vreeland was not a fashion designer but a fashion magazine editor - Harper's Bazaar for 25 years - and was what we call "a force of nature."  She got herself hired by the fashion editor Carmel Snow, and her eccentricity and very original world view, her demands for telling detail on the often magnificent photography that took the viewer/reader on a journey are legendary, seemingly entirely narcissic, yet her ideas worked, they sold, they changed history in their way.

Vreeland felt that people were nothing if they didn't have style, their own style.  Hers was heavily influenced by Japan and Russia.

This documentary is jam packed with fashion, some you think you remember and some you will remember for seeing it for the first time.  Twiggy for instance.  Cher.  Women who she felt were beyond models.  Jackie O.

However what I will take away with me most is this; Diana Vreeland saw fashion photoshoots as stories.  She often coached photographers and models to imagine that story.  The eye travels to locations all over the world, over the body and face of the model for what the language and emotions are, and you as a viewer/reader will travel too.

C Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved 2013

FUR (AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS THE PHOTOGRAPHER) : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

Robert Downey Junior as the hairy guy.  Nicole Kidman as the photographer Diane Arbus, 1950's housewife from a rich family, who likes things that scare her.  Based on a biography, and suggesting a love story.  Lonely wife subplot to her husband, lonely wife from a family rich in the furrier or fashion business, her husband photographer of still maniken - style models.  New Line Cinema.

So, I like Robert Downey Junior so much that I will see any film he's in and I did want to see what the make up artists did with him to make him the hairy guy.  Now that I was into the film, I found it all so - curious.  I was left with more curiosity, because of the last scene in which Diane goes to a nudist camp and must strip down herself to have a conversation with another camper.  More skin or fur, you see.

So the theme here is the title "Fur."
And I like the jest of "Portrait" of the "Photographer" and I wondered what was IMAGINARY about the film, or her life, or her work.

I know some poets who have resorted to photography.

HENRY DARGER : IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL :CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

This is a peculiar film because the subject, Henry Darger, was a peculiar person and a complete unknown in his lifetime.  He died in 1977 as an old man and then his landlady (who must have really known how to mind her own business) find his art - a treasure!

If Henry had been a child in our times rather than his (he died in 1977 as an old man), he would probably have never been a child slave as an orphan on a farm where he was institutionalized.  He probably would have been diagnosed with some disorder or psychological problem, which there is far too much of going on these days, and medicated, maybe out of his creativity.

Fortunately none of these things happened.  Instead he lead a simple and isolated life and became a secret writer and artist.

Henry Darger worked as a hospital janitor but when he was at home he was writing and painting.  When he died in Chicago his landlady discovered 300 paintings, some over 10 feet long, and 15,000 page illustrated novel called THE REALMS of the UNREAL. 

Clearly his childhood experience of being in an asylum for the "feeble - minded" had deeply effected him, as the story is about slave children.  Seven angelic sisters lead a rebellion against child-enslaving godless men. 

Henry went to church every Sunday of his life, though he struggled with religion.  Interestingly his paintings illustrate this world which we could argue, he lived in, and invented.

Linking to more information from PBS  DARGER - FILM - PBS

C 2013  Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

THE PRIZE WINNER OF DEFIANCE OHIO : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

This film staring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson was really SWEET! 

I loved the historical value of it, the 1950's, the days when women used their literary talents and musical talents to write jingles.  These women entered contests to win prizes small and large and a group of them, including a woman in an iron lung, formed a sort of support/writer's group too!

Evelyn Ryan, was a real live Defiance, Ohio housewife and mother of ten, who managed to win the down payment of their house and years later save it from foreclosure, due to her winning spirit.  Rarely sorry for herself or their poverty, Evelyn was the kind of woman that isn't around much anymore.  Her strongest talent may be an ability to forgive and move on.



Another strong positive on this film is the unsentimental but revealing way Evelyn Ryan's plight as a housewife and mother of ten in the 1950's is determined by what we would identify as prevailing sexism in American culture. 



That wasn't so long ago.

C 2013 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

reposted April 2021

CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND - BASED ON CHUCK BARRIS'S AUTOBIO : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM and BOOK REVIEW

CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND - BASED ON CHUCK BARRIS'S AUTOBIO : CHRISTINE TRZYNA DVD and BOOK  REVIEW

Was Chuck Barris, game show host, game show INVENTOR, songwriter ("Palisades Park") a CIA Assassin for hire? 

After seeing this film, which I enjoyed, I ordered the very confessional book. I wanted to read the words Chuck Barris wrote and also see how much of his autobio /memoir was in or out of the film.  Turned out that the film followed the book rather closely, especially the dialogue!

I wanted to read C.B. about his involvement into CIA operations that resulted in his killing 33 people. 

Although I almost never rely on Wikis for my encyclopedia because I have found so much opinion, or so much druck quoted from lies in books referenced in Wikis about celebrities, I checked the Wiki on Barris.  It said the CIA denied that Barris ever worked for them.

Yea, well why would the CIA ever admit that anyone ever killed for them? 

The film leaves me with the notion that maybe, just maybe, Chuck was recruited by someone who worked for the CIA or had a side business, and that he was under a very incorrect impression that he was working directly for the CIA.  The book sure didn't give that notion.  The film blurred the possibility that he had killed his superior while the book said someone else killed the man and Chuck killed a mole to revenge that death.  The mole (acted by Julia Roberts) is killed by switching poison in the movie.  In the book he kills her with a gun.

What makes anyone able to kill people who they have no personal issue with?  In this case money and patriotism and the game of the hunt.
 Inventor of now very vintage television shows such as the Dating Game, the Gong Show, Barris wanted more in life, and was perhaps a bored genius.  Was killing people for money what kept him interested in life?  No, but perhaps what was challenged by a lifestyle that was at once comedic and tragic was his notions of life itself.  It's value.  If any.

Chuck Barris wrote without apology.  He didn't excuse his womanizing or sexism, or anything else he did.

That is a lesson for me.

C 2012 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

THE PEOPLE'S PALACE : A PORTRAIT OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

A film by Kunhardt Productions and Thirteen/ New York  C 2007

You read me bitch about LAPL?

Los Angeles Public Library can't compare with the New York Public Library, which still has an emphasis on being a research facility for the public's use. 

Los Angeles Public Library's book purchases reflect a popular library view point.  (This really hit me when I discovered a slew of Nadine Gordimer's books on a free book cart being given away because they hadn't been taken out enough over at the Studio City branch a few years ago.) 

For many years and ongoing, I've suggested dozens of book purchases, some of the titles having been featured in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the LA Weekly, or the BOOK FAIR (once known as the UCLA LA TIMES BOOK FAIR now the USC LA TIMES BOOK FAIR) and though I'm told that all such suggestions are read, they must be read and then pitched (which rhymes with bitched) because I don't think a single suggestion I've made has resulted in a book purchase.

What is most in demand at NY circa 2007? 

First drafts of now famous writer's works.  Manuscripts that are, because they are not in a museum but a place where they are used, are conserved but also lent out for use. 

Betty Frieden wrote at New York Public Library. 

So did Bob Dylan.

There are thousands of original music scores housed at NYPL, John Cage's orchestrations being the most used and studied.

Copies of handwritten documents by Thomas Jefferson (he hand copied unedited Declarations of Independence for some of his friends so they could read it and then the official, published copies, to compair.  George Washington's beer recipe...


Prior to the Andrew Carnegie endowment the library was unable to expand and go public.  Carnegie believed in the survival of the fittest, but he also believed in giving children a chance.

Today one of the most vital branches is the Schomberg center and their Black cultural, historical, literacy, and other efforts.


SCHOMBURG CENTER (NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY) FOR BLACK CULTURE  link!

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY  link!

I 've benefited from Andrew Carnegie's largess in my lifetime.  I don't have the Frequent Flyer miles or the friend with an empty nest required to go research in New York, but I wish.

THE SINGING DETECTIVE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

Loovved this movie, but I was sewing when I watched it the first time and thought I should watch it again to resolve some questions I had about the plot. I decided I wanted to understand the screenplay behind it.


 I did watch it again and decided that was terrific, and not just because Robert Downey Junior is one of my favorite actors. 

RD Jr.  acts as Dan Dark, a pulp fiction writer who has been badly physically burned, and while in the hospital recovering, flashes back to episodes in his past fiction writing, which take place in the 1950's and uses music from the 1950's as a lead into memory. 

As many writers can testify their real life experiences can also be used in or inspire fiction.  So Dan Dark's memories cross into his real life as well.  The confusion he experiences and which I experienced watching the film, which took artful editing and masterful writing (Screenplay by Dennis Potter) works, and some of the brutality is softer because the viewer knows these are fictive characters.

You know I won't ruin it by telling you the story, but if you haven't ever watched THE SINGING DETECTIVE, watch it - at least twice.

C 2013  Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

AIR GUITAR NATION WAS HILARIOUS and INTRIGUING : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

Intriguing! 

I admit that I have not only been "movie deprived" over the last few years - though I AM CATCHING UP! - but I also was somehow one of the last to understand that there are AIR GUITAR competitions that culminate in an International Competition in Finland, that it is thought of as performance art by the practitioners, and some think, athletics, and that the competition is funny, friendly, and fierce!

I loved this film/ DVD! I was laughing out loud and stopped crocheting to watch with all my attention focused.

This documentary film focuses on the 2003 competition which featured David "C- Diddy" Jung and Dan "Bjorn Turoque" Crane, but you see clips of a lot of other top performers, and well, I decided that IF YOU CAN SEE THE (INVISIBLE) GUITAR then you are watching a master, and I was.

There was also this:  It brought back the GUITAR GOD era, HEAVY METAL and other opportunities for a GUITAR GOD to show off his or her licks, stage antics, and costuming.  Bringing all of that together, along with mugging, attitude, and knowledge of actual guitar playing is an art, and these are artists!

C 2013 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved

ANTHONY HOPKIN'S SLIPSTREAM FILLED ME WITH ANXIETY : THE WORD IS SHATTERED : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

Anthony Hopkins, known for his work in some scarey freaky films,  wrote the screenplay, directed the film, and worked as an actor in the film, so I had to see this. 

Slipstream was edited with disturbing breaks and rapid images.  OK, I had trouble following the story and maybe that has something to do with the fact that I have never watched reality television and love long periods of deep concentration. 

So I read the back of the DVD package to get a clue, and then realized "OH, OK this is a story about a screenwriter (could be any writer) who begins to live in his script/ the world he has created, so much so that he looses his sense of reality. 

A viewer really had to pay attention and pick up clues quickly.  I apparently was unable to do this.  Yet, I understood what was intended and realized that Anthony Hopkins had effectively conveyed to the viewer exactly what it was he wanted to!  In this case the DVD package wasn't lying when it said "Soon, he is thrown into a vortex where dreams, time, and reality collide in an increasingly whirling slipsteam.

Let me explain that early on a female character does define "slipstream" for the viewer, and so I thought this had something to do with reincarnation, which is a subject I've long been very fascinated with.  However, there was nothing I was cognitive of while watching that seemed to be about past lives.  Perhaps what was being suggested was instead the phenomena of Deja Vu, the feeling that you have been to a place or scene before, which some people attribute to past life memories.

This film also left me with a temporary depression.

As a result, I didn't give it a second go to try and figure it all out.

C 2013 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

THE DEAL : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

One of the things I enjoy is watching a DVD and THEN reading the synopsis on the back of the case, the marketing.

Do I even agree with what that paragraph or two (propaganda) has to say?

For instance on the back of this film's case in big letters it says "SIDE-SPLITTINGLY FUNNY" and "TWO PEOPLE HAVE NEVER BEEN SO WRONG FOR EACH OTHER."

OK, I was amused at parts but my sides never split and also I did not think this was a love story.

If I had written the synopsis, I would say that this is a humorous but not so exaggerated story about how a film is made, starting with the screenplay.  I loved the character of Charlie Berns as acted by William H. Macy, who in real life had his hand in this screenplay by way of his real life nephew who wrote it. 

If you've spent any time at all with your laptop in a coffee house among screen writers (even when you are not a screenwriter), if you have ever walked down restaurant row on Magnolia where the Screen Writers are getting together with the People, you know that this story could very well be TRUE! 

Character Berns seems to have experienced or heard about every last reality of getting a screenplay to production, and so he quickly puts into their places anyone who has any altruistic ideas.

The closest to my side getting split was when the Diedra Hern character as acted by Meg Ryan to be a unshakable studio exec who has been put on the case to keep after the screenwriter so that he delivers, goes to visit Charlie Berns at his home, which is an apartment building with one of those San Fernando Valley decayed buildings that has not only cracks in the cement and a broken pool empty of water but a dead tree in it. 

Sadly this is how too many screenwriters actually live in the San Fernando Valley, when they aren't in coffee houses on Ventura or restaurant row on Magnolia writing or pitching or explaining what it is they meant to do with the story to the People.

Don't ask me how I know!

C 2013 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

MAN ON WIRE : DOCUMENTARY on PHILIPPE PETIT : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

MAN ON WIRE is a documentary about a Frenchman named Philippe Petit who has more than a bit of circus in him. In 1974 he managed to walk (and dance) a wire tight rope that was between the two Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. This wasn't just a stunt. It was a spectacle.

High Wire" by '90s Boston band Smackmelon is the identified music.

I got it that this daring feat, almost unimaginable, was "the artistic crime of the century," and I sure was happy that Petit and his team got away with it!


The DVD doesn't focus on the art of walking a wire but in the collaborative effort of various individuals in France and the United States to make this achievement happen, and they had to be real sneaky to haul all that equipment to the top of the towers and install it. Today if they tried to pull it off they wouldn't be able to.


I couldn't help but think about this from a 2012 perspective: because of 9/11 some would say, and I feel this, that the United States of America as is, all that privacy invading "security" as a result of the terrorist attack that fell these towers, is not the one I grew up in or want to live in, though I won't be packing up to go anywhere anytime soon. I think that we had a sense of freedom we no longer have. Such as the freedom to take chances like this! I feel sorry for children growing up in this atmosphere.


I'm reminded of a term I learned in one of my Literature - Creative Writing classes: SENTIMENTALITY FOR THE PRESENT. As I understand this term it means that in the now you know you are in the best days, and they are soon passing, like in the last second. In other words I acknowledge it's going to get worse not better.


This film made me sentimental for the pre 9/11 days, knowing that all the privacy invading "security" that I have come to accept, but which my immigrant ancestors would despise, to access any public building and many hospitals, is actually more like the Soviet Union in the Cold War than some of us patriotic types are comfortable with.


So, watching the DVD which was put out by Magnolia Pictures in the United Kingdom and funded by the National Lottery, I couldn't just watch and not think about the changes since his August 7th, 1974 walk, and while watching I was with the project every step of the way. At the same time I felt that sentimentality for the present.

WHAT I WANT MY WORDS TO DO TO YOU : EVE ENSLER : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

Here's the set up for this DVD : Fifteen female inmates, most in prison for murder, some for life, are part of a Writers Round Table sort of writing class with Eve Ensler as their teacher/group leader. Over a four year period their writing was meant to be theraputic and help them come to terms with their crime. At the end of this time, Ensler recruited some actresses such as Glenn Close and Marisa Tomei, to read the work of one of the prisoner writing group members. Hearing their own words acted out on stage proves to be an interesting experience and an emotional one for everyone including the audience.

There are writers working in prisons heading up writing groups all around the country. Sometimes publications - chap books - are made of their work.  I  watched this film with no expectations and appreciated it greatly for what it is.

HARD CANDY : EDGIEST MOVIE I EVER SAW : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

HARD CANDY : DVD REVIEW : EDGIEST MOVIE I EVER SAW : CHRISTINE TRZYNA DVD FILM REVIEW

If you want to watch a movie that will make your thoughts twist and your emotions boil, then HARD CANDY, A Lionsgate release staring Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page is the one to watch. The screenplay was written by Brian Nelson.

14 year old Hayley is no doubt a genius, so what's she doing meeting up with a 30-something photographer she met over the Internet?

Does she do this often? Is she Taking Justice into her own hands, making a fantasy of torture and revenge into reality? Seems so. How guilty is the photograper of sexual abuse, rape, or even murder of another girl? Is Hayley a sociopath? Do we think Jeff the photographer deserves what he's getting? Or is it Haley who is truly the spiritually sick one?

From almost the beginning to the end, I was all torn up. My thoughts went all over and my stomach cramped.

Thus this production was fine art, for it did the most that any great piece of art can do which is make us question our own ethics and values as we relate or can't and so involve us in the art.
Should you feel sorry for him? Is she right in her assumptions and accusations?

So many questions!

IT MIGHT GET LOUD : THE EDGE : JIMMY PAGE : JACK WHITE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

One of the reasons I blog is so that when someone puts my name into a search engine on the Internet (which people rarely do!) and the name Jimmy Page (or James Patrick Page), which they do a whole lot, my name and his name will be associated.

Joking... but I'm intrigued by Jimmy Page, not just as a legendary Led Zeppelin rock and roll guitarist, but as a person. I ACTUALLY BELIEVE HE MAY BE A REINCARNATION OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, or at least from the same soul group.



Are we having fun yet?



So what's good about this DVD, is that, though you get to hear these three musicians jam a bit, and give each other instructions, this is not a concert film. I don't think they do a single song all the way through. What's good is that it's a bit like biography, with snippets of their memories of how they go their career going, and how that went, so I got to learn more about Jimmy Page than I did, and was surprised that he did start out in bands as a kid.



The marketing on the back of the package calls this an "unparalleled music summit." That's right.



C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet Rights and International Rights